Aelius stood in a forest of dark and polished wood in the Athenaeum, listening to the rustling leaves of vellum and parchment and paper and leather and hide.
All about him, books.
Books scribed on paper made from trees that never grew. Books written at the height of empires that never were. Books that spoke of people who never lived. Impossible books and unthinkable books and unknowable books. Books as old as he, bound to this place as he was. An inconceivable quirk of the Black Mother’s magiks created, in truth, for a solitary purpose.
And now, as Aelius heard the choir begin anew in the dark around him, as he felt Niah’s sigh of relief as an almost physical sensation, he knew he’d done it.
Mia had won through.
His mother was dead.
His work was finished.
The old man dragged deep on his cigarillo, savoring the taste upon his tongue. Looking about the forest of dark wood and rustling paper leaves. All those impossible, unthinkable, unknowable words. Treatises of exiled apostates. Autobiographies of murdered despots. Opuses written by masters never apprenticed. Words only he would ever know. Words he was bound to, body and soul.
He breathed gray into the dark.
And he flicked his burning cigarillo into the stacks.
It took a moment, a breath, a wisp of smoke rising from the smoldering pages. But soon, the paper caught like tinder, brittle with age, dry as dust. The flames spread quick, first out along one shelf, and then to the next, crackling and hungry. Orange fingers, trembling and tearing, leaping from cover to cover and aisle to aisle.
The Lady of Flame ever hated her Mother Night.
Aelius sat in the middle of it, watching the conflagration rise higher and higher. Listening to the bookworms roar out in the brightening gloom. Black smoke drifting into the whispering dark. Tired beyond sleeping, but wanting only that. For all her dominion over death, not even the Mother had the power to give life to the dead twice. She had no choice but to grant his wish now. Sweet, long, and dark.
Finally.
Sleep.
He breathed the smoke. Savoring the taste. Feeling the pieces of him, the pages that bound him to this earth, burning away to nothing. Smiling at the thought that, in the end, it hadn’t been blades or poisons or arkemy that had brought down the murderers that took seed in this place after they struck him low. It’d been words.
Just simple words.
“Funny old place, this,” he sighed.
The flames rose higher.
The dark burned bright.
And finally,
finally,
the old man slept.
Tric could still smell Ashlinn’s perfume.
He stood on the Sky Altar, and it was all he could recall. Not the blood she’d coughed onto the stone, not the poisoned goldwine spilled at her feet. Staring out into the Abyss beyond the railing, all he could smell was the scent she’d worn.
Lavender.
He was glad of it. Remembering her that way. Flowers in his mind, not thorns. Forgiving her had been like lancing a festered wound. Letting go of his hatred, the weight off his shoulders, giving him wings enough to mourn her. His burden was almost lifted now. The shackles on his wrists almost broken.
Only one chain remained.
And so he thought about all he and Mia might have had. The thing they almost were. Savoring the taste on his tongue one last time before setting it aside. Throwing that last shackle off—the shackle of what might have been—and accepting what was.
Nowhere near enough. But perhaps enough to keep him warm.
Mia’s final kiss lingered on his lips. His final promise lingered in the air.
YOU ARE MY HEART. YOU ARE MY QUEEN. I’D DO ANYTHING YOU ASKED ME.
The boy looked down at the black stains on his hands.
“AND EVERYTHING YOU WON’T,” he sighed.
He looked out to the Abyss beyond the altar again.
And he stepped up onto the railing.
And he jumped.